Symptoms
by Suna-Scribbles
Summary: She glanced to the window, but there was no Owl.  There never again would be an Owl.  There never had been an Owl.
1. Chapter One

_Let us be honest: I have no idea where this plot is going, or where I even want it to go. I just need to get this out of my head. Let me know if you have any ideas you wish to share with me. -Suna_

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><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

**Welcome to the Real World**

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><p>Sarah dropped her duffel bag in the doorway. Five years at University, two Degrees, one in English and one in Art, four summer jobs, and one shakily self-diagnosed case of schizophrenia hadn't changed her room at home in the slightest. That was all well and logical, but she had felt somehow that college, that <em>knowing<em>, would have left everything changed. Stepping back into her room was like erasing those five years. The only thing new was her cap from graduation, sitting proudly on her dresser, nestled next to items from her childhood, items that reminded her of _that incident_. Items that had once been her friends, but that now lay silent.

She stepped forward, picking up one of the stuffed animals off of the dresser and stoking her hands over it. When she had gone to college she had taken all of them with her. Eventually, though, school, and studying, and new friends, _human_ friends, had pushed her childhood friends and her childhood tendencies away. She was a woman now. And slowly she had started taking her old friends back home until none were left in her apartment. The last had been taken away the spring semester of her Sophomore year. Just four years and a handful of months after _that incident_. But four years was a long time to allow one's self to be _insane_.

It was a couple of months after that, that _he _had stopped watching her.

After _that incident_ the owl had always been around, showing up a couple of times a week, staying only for a short while. Long enough for her to notice. Long enough for him to take stock of her life as she assumed he was doing. Thinking he watched her was like the peak of a roller coaster- you know that at any moment the ground will drop out from beneath you, you just do not know _when_.

Sarah put the toy down and sat on her bed. From the purse at her side she pulled out an old sketchbook, it's spine held together with teal duct-tape, and a pencil. She tried to let her mind wander as the pencil moved across the page in slow curves and elegant cursive, but as she so often did she thought again of Jareth, of Goblins, of magic so concentrated it was visible, glittering in the air. Of what her schizophrenia made her see. She had been thankful, at first, when Jareth's visits slowed, going from every few days to every few weeks and then finally to every few months until he wasn't in her life at all. She felt less insane. She felt like she could breathe again, like she was finally getting off of the roller coaster. But it was after he left, after the pain and fear and sleeplessness ended, that she realized that her life was _dull_.

Although the first month of her Sophomore year was nothing but a dark blur in her mind, Sarah didn't party in college, didn't drink, didn't smoke. The most fun she ever experienced that was not related to school was the time she went to the zoo by herself just to waste a Sunday afternoon. She studied and went to class. She wrote essays and short fiction and poetry. She painted and took a course on glass blowing. She worked and slept. But life was dull and she found herself missing the ride of Jareth's watching her.

But she didn't want to go back _there_, and she refused to speak _those words_ and was so compete in her refusal that she did not put candles on her birthday cakes, did not throw coins into fountain, and especially not wells. She often told herself that she was being silly, that _there_ didn't exist, that _they_ had never existed.

Being back in her childhood room was almost too much. It pushed in her face the option that everything she knew wasn't real, everything she didn't want to be real, was.

Her father called from the kitchen, saying that dinner was ready. Toby raced by her room, blowing her a raspberry through the open door. As Sarah came back to herself she smiled at him before she glanced down at her sketchbook. Her own face stared back, something easy enough to draw for an art student with but herself and a mirror to perfect her figure drawing, but in her self portrait's cupped hands was _that maze_ and the image was ringed with spiraling cursive spelling out the words 'I'm coming home.'

Sarah slammed the book shut and looked out the window, but there was no owl. There would never again be an owl. There never had been an owl. All the same her hands shook. "I _am_ home."


	2. Chapter Two

_Again, I must give you some honesty. As far as the long-term this story has very little plot. I know of one thing that I want to happen eventually, but as for how all the loose ends will tie together- nope, nothing yet. If you have ideas please feel free to share._

_I am quite pleased with myself though, getting a chapter up only ten days after I started writing this._

_Thank you to _MidnightLyoness_, _Kuroneko388_, and _Rebellion of the Kat _for the reviews._

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

**All Work and No Play Makes Jill a Dull Girl**

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><p>Sarah soon found that her childhood home was not, in fact, <em>home<em>. Toby was growing into a rambunctious nine-year-old and the center of her father and step mother's attentions and affections, just as she had always suspected him to be. Everyone expected her to have a job now that she was in the 'real world'. She could not find peace in that old two-story house of her childhood. She remembered why she had never come back over summer vacations. Staying at childhood house, searching half-heatedly for work left her tired most days and irrationally paranoid. She thought she heard the soft brush of wings in the darkness- a sound that should have been comforting because she surely would not hear an owl for they were such _quiet_ birds- and the noise left her breathless and covered in goosebumps. In the corners of her eyes shadows moved. She slept without dreaming and never woke rested. Sometimes she thought she heard Toby, whose room shared a wall with hers, speaking to a man with an accent she couldn't place. But when she rushed into his room one day there was nothing and her brother looked at her as if she were insane, _which she probably was_. So she left. Went back to school for a summer and got a teaching credential because she couldn't think of anything else to do.

The high school a town over and an hour's drive away was willing to hire her, excited that they could get one person to teach both Advanced Placement Literature and the bi-weekly Painting class. She got a little house out there too, an updated key-turner that still held onto it's old charm. She spent a week painting the walls with bold colors, hoping to shock some liveliness back into her life. Another couple of days kept her busy shopping with her step-mother for furniture that Toby helped her arrange. He helped her when she took everything from her room at home with her, even giving her back her once-beloved Lancelot. She scattered the toys and the pictures throughout the house. Having the memory triggers less concentrated made seeing them easier, more pleasant and reminiscent of her childhood than _those events_.

But she was still lonely. She hadn't stayed in contact with any of her college friends and everyone in this little town seemed too busy to care. Sarah had been fine over the summer when she spent all her time preparing for the school year, locked away in her little house or on the local college campus, but once the semester started she felt a great shift. She did her best to stay busy with teaching, to ignore the ache in her chest.

In late November was when the ache finally sawed through the bars of her always crumbling resolution to stay _sane_, and in a desperate bid to fill her life with something more than grading papers and writing midterms and finals she began speaking to her old toys again. As she held a Firey in her hands and paced the length of the living room she spoke to it. "Why is it a game to take off your head?" But there was silence. In exasperation she threw her head back, shoulders sagging, and thought she glimpsed pale brown-white-blond feathers moving in the mirror over the fireplace. But she hadn't seen it. It was straining to let herself act _insane_ again. She tried for a week to coax them back to life, Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus- even naming them felt simply _silly_-but gave up quickly. Not for the first time she told herself that _all of that_ had to have been only a dream and the workings of an over-active imagination, an imagination now trained to work in certain paths and in certain ways. She should not let herself believe otherwise ever again. She had other outlets, her writing, her art.

Even still, she would sometimes glance at the mirror over the fireplace. Perhaps she would see them there. Perhaps one morning she would wake up and the dew on the lawn would be mixed with glitter.

Finals week was a fast blur of quiet tests and pleading students. Sarah remembered the sigh of relief she gave as she shut her front door behind her, letting her purse slide off her shoulder and onto the ground. Finally, respite at last. Winter break was painting and writing and sleeping in long and staying up longer and- dull. Lonely. Horrible. With nothing to do Sarah spent three days in bed, sleeping and hoping her phone would ring, before she finally got restless and put herself to cleaning her little house. Her living quarters had always been spotless and organized, thanks in part to a case of OCD that manifested after _that incident_. All of her possessions were always neat and tidy, in order. She never had to _search_ for a thing. But she spent December reorganizing everything, condensing things until finally, after much labor and the sacrifice of what had once been her office, she had one bare room. She covered the aged hardwood with a canvas tarp and purchased an old couch from the local Good Will to put under the window. Then she filled the rest of the room with easels and blank canvases and tubes of paint.

In January, after the cleaning, after a Christmas spent with her father and step-mother and Toby, she started painting. _This_, she thought with elation, hope, _this is what I have been missing. _The hole that could not be filled with wasted time or family or friends or lectures or grading, could be filled with painting. She had always loved painting and sketching and other forms of art- anything that got her hands dirty- but she was very, very good at writing and so had majored in both when she went to university.

As Sarah painted she found herself the subject of many of the paintings, looking either frightened or full of wonder, many times surrounded by darkness and reaching hands. She didn't plan the paintings, they simply _came_. In one she was at the top of a long staircase. In another she cradled a young Toby in her arms. And in one that she worked on until the sun rose she _killed the owl_. For the day after she was filled with relief, relief that slowly drained away until she felt she was going to break. She took that canvas an had it face the wall before she went and curled up in bed.

She was crazy. She was schizophrenic. She _had to be_ schizophrenic. It had all been nothing. Her friends. _That place_. _Him_.

Yes. It was far easier to believe one's self insane than to believe in magic.

By the end of her painting spree the run down couch she had purchased was covered in dried paint. Sarah would often collapse into it and from underneath bring out her sketchbook. She would turn to the page she had worked on that first night that she was home from University, puzzling over it not for the first time. It wasn't rare for her doodling to turn into images of herself and _that place that she had imagined_, but that was the first time words had accompanied an image. She had come to the conclusion a few months ago that it was just a wishfulness for homecoming, a homecoming that didn't really happen. But the answer didn't fit right. The words felt too used, too lyrical. Part of a song that she had heard, perhaps?

A song? _Yes._ That one with Skylar Grey. How did the chorus go?

"I'm coming home, I'm coming home... Tell the World I'm coming home. Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday... I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes-"

Her words cut off with a quiet gasp. Stiffly, Sarah stood up and walked from the room, slamming the door behind her. There would be no talk of kingdoms. Not in her house. Not in her _mind._


End file.
